Arrest @museum.de

F: In early January 1834, this wooden door with its heavy iron fittings slammed shut behind Fritz Reuter.

M: What had happened? A few months after his hasty departure from Jena, he started looking for a university in another German principality to continue his studies there. Not an easy undertaking for a former fraternity member who was wanted as a troublemaker and rabble-rouser!

F: Reuter presented himself at the University of Leipzig and – despite his father's warnings – made his way home via Berlin, where his cousin Ernst was completing an apprenticeship as a brewer. Fritz Reuter visited his cousin, went on a pub crawl with him... and was reported to the authorities.

M: Early in the morning of the 31st of October 1833, the police started hammering on a prostitute's door in Berlin's Schützenstrasse. Reuter was dragged out of bed, arrested and taken to the Stadtvogtei on Molkenmarkt – Berlin's city jail. Two months later, he was transferred to the Hausvogtei, the remand prison. Beyond this wooden door, in a cell roughly one by two metres (or just over three by six foot six), he was left stewing as he awaited trial.

F: The records of his interrogation portray him as a sincere and steadfast young man with firm convictions. Reuter made the following statement:

M: "No power on earth shall compel me to make any confession whatsoever concerning my friends and comrades. As far as I am concerned, you may lock me up for so long that the hair on my head turns grey, yet I shall say nothing about them."

F: In a letter to his father, it all sounded rather different:

M: "I have admitted everything freely and openly, which allows me to hope that my imprisonment will not be of too long a duration."

F: His hopes were not fulfilled. He was looking at a lengthy period in prison. But by the time he was informed of the devastating sentence, he was no longer at the remand prison. The door to his cell in Berlin was preserved when the building was demolished six decades later – in honour of the former, meanwhile celebrated inmate.